Title of the article:

THE IMAGE OF PARADISE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 1910–1920S: DYNAMICS OF THE “ESTATE TOPOS”

Author(s):

Olga A. Bogdanova

Information about the author/authors

Olga A. Bogdanova — DSc in Philology, Leading Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St. 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: olgabogda@yandex.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2019

Volume

Vol. 53

Pages

pp. 181–192

Received

January 18, 2019

Date of publication

September 28, 2019

Index UDK

821.161.1

Index BBK

83.3(2Рос=Рус)53

Abstract

The neo-mythologeme of “city-garden” which arose in Western Europe at the turn of the 20^th century goes back to long-standing urban projects: in French literature — to the utopian images of “city-village” (Mercier, Rousseau, Voltaire), whereas in German culture impulse for creating the “city-garden” was given in the early 19^th century by Napoleon's troops which destroyed fortifications of medieval cities. Unlike their western counterparts the Russian writers of the early 20^th century, basing on the legacy of “noble” literature of the 19^th century, had the original source for development of the mentioned neo-mythologeme of their own — landowner estates projection of “paradise on earth” rooted in pre-revolutionary Russian life and Russian literature. The key to a successful reception of “city-garden” neo-mythologeme in Russia in 1910–1920-ies came to be the “estate topos” as one of the elements of the Russian “national axiomatics”. It indicates its plasticity and serious heuristic potential, and not only its belonging to the phenomenon of estate of the 19^th century passing into history, but also the ability to create new cultural modifications, such as V. V. Khlebnikov’s “city of the future” or “city-garden” in the prose of A. N. Tolstoy and in Soviet poetry of the 1920s. The author concludes that a synthetic idea of the “city-garden” has united “beginning” and “end” of the biblical Paradise image — Eden of the Old Testament and the apocalyptic New Jerusalem.

Keywords

paradise, landowner estate, estate topos, “city of the future”, “city-garden”, the first third of the 20^th century.

References

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